Egyptian court frees civil rights advocate

Case has strained U.S. ties to Cairo

December 04, 2002|By Neil MacFarquhar, New York Times News Service.

In a slap at Egypt's emergency laws, the country's highest appeals court on Tuesday ordered a retrial for Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian-American civil rights advocate whose high-profile prosecution strained ties with the United States and was seen as a blatant effort to intimidate critics of the Cairo government.

Ibrahim, a 64-year-old sociology professor who has been ailing, was released so quickly from Tora Prison in Cairo after the ruling that when his family was called to collect him they found him outside the walls in his prison robe with just his walker.

The Court of Cassation nullified a 7-year sentence issued two times by the Supreme State Security Court and announced that the highest court itself would hear a new trial starting on Jan. 7.

Ibrahim and his supporters expressed confidence that he would be acquitted this time.

"This whole case was unnecessary," Ibrahim said as he sat looking drawn on a couch in his apartment a few hours after his release.

"Everyone emerged a loser. The country is a loser. The government is a loser. The regime was a loser. I was a loser, and my family was a loser."

He and 27 others, mostly staff members at the Ibn Khaldoun Center for Social and Developmental Studies, were arrested in July 2000 after announcing that they would monitor parliamentary elections that fall. The center had said the elections in 1995 were rigged.

Ibrahim had been found guilty of defaming Egypt, accepting money from overseas without authorization and other charges stemming from his research on sensitive topics like voter rights and the treatment of Egypt's Coptic minority.

The case was a curiosity from the start, with the grapevine attributing it to an article that he wrote that ridiculed the idea of Arab leaders, including President Hosni Mubarak, grooming their sons for succession.

The U.S. had raised concerns about the case and its ramifications for reform in Egypt. President Bush sent a letter to Mubarak over the summer that warned that Washington would not deliver new aid to Egypt to protest the prosecution.

On Tuesday, the Bush administration praised the decision.

"As you are very well-aware, the United States has felt that his conviction was unjust," said State Department spokesman Philip Reeker.

The U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Reeker said, has been in close contact with Ibrahim and his family throughout the case and will continue to monitor his treatment.

Egypt had sought an additional $130 million this year after Congress approved a $200 million increase in aid for Israel to fight terrorism. Traditionally, the United States has increased aid to Egypt by two-thirds the amount of new funds for Israel.

Administration critics have accused government officials of being too timid in backing Ibrahim because they did not want to bruise relations with Cairo at a time the United States needed support in trying to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and, possibly, in action against Iraq. Egypt reacted by telling the United States to stay out of its internal affairs, and the criticism from Washington was used to smear Ibrahim.

"It backfired, because the governmental press used this to tarnish Saad Eddin Ibrahim further and tell people here we have been deprived of $130 million because of this American spy," said Hisham Kassem of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights.

"The moral of the story is that the judiciary needs reform, that we're still safe with the Court of Cassation, and that it's not safe for civil rights activists to work anymore," Kassem said.